dio filled with amateurs desirous
of admiring his magnificent and strange "Icebergs," which he has just
finished.

It is difficult to account for the extreme ignorance of many foreigners
with regard to the political and intellectual standing of the United
States, when one considers the extent of our commerce, which covers the
entire world like a vast net, or when one views the incessant tide of
immigration which thins the population of Europe to our profit. A French
admiral, Viscount Duquesne, inquired of me at Havana, in 1853, if it
were possible to venture in the vicinity of St. Louis without
apprehending being massacred by the Indians. The father of a talented
French pianist who resides in this country wrote a few years since to
his son to know if the furrier business in the city of New York was
exclusively carried on by Indians. Her Imperial Highness the
Grand-Duchess of Russia, on seeing Barnum's name in an American paper,
requested me to tell her if he were not one of our prominent statesmen.
For very many individuals in Europe, the United States have remained
just what they were when Chateaubriand wrote "Les Natchez," and saw
parrots(?) on the boughs of the trees which the majestic "_Mechasebe_"
rolled down the current of its mighty waters. All this may seem
improbable, but I advance nothing that I am not fully prepared to prove.
There is, assuredly, an intelligent class of people who read and know
the truth; but, unfortunately, it is not the most numerous, nor the most
inclined to render us justice. Proudhon himself--that bold, vast mind,
ever struggling for the triumph of light and progress--regards the
pioneer of the West merely as an heroic outlaw, and the Americans in
general as half-civilized savages. From Talleyrand, who said,
"_L'Amerique est un pays de cochons sales et de sales cochons,_" down to
Zimmermann, the director of the piano-classes at the Conservatory of
Paris, who, without hearing me, gave as a reason for refusing to receive
me in 1841, that "America was a country that could produce nothing but
steam-engines," there is scarcely an eminent man abroad who has not made
a thrust at the Americans.--It may not be irrelevant to say here that
the little Louisianian who was refused as a pupil in 1841 was called
upon in 1851 to sit as a judge on the same bench with Zimmermann, at the
"_Concours_" of the Conservatory.

Unquestionably there are many blanks in certain branches of our
civilization. Our ap